Team:HBUT-China/Public Engagement

Exhibition at Hubei University of Technology

On OCT 12 and OCT 13,we made an exhibition at Hubei University of Technology. We introduced our project and the iGEM competition to people who came and wanted to know about our project. We talked with them about Nickel pollution and told them to protect the environment. We also created a QQ group for iGEM competition communication and we put the group number on the exhibition so that people interested in our project and iGEM competition can join in the group and discuss questions together.

Member Recruitment

OCT 13 2016 was not as any ordinary day, iGEM HBUT-China had successfully accomplished our first mission together, the member recruitment. At that time, our team consisted of 16 members from different faculties, such as the School of Biological Engineering And Food Science, the School of Art And Design, the School of Scientists etc, but we realized that it was not enough for our team. We showed them our project and iGEM competition through PPT and our explanation. As a result, we searched for more people with hidden potential to join us after the recruitment. This formed our team which has a greater diversity of cross-disciplinary professions.

WeChat Official Account

We created a WeChat official account to spread knowledges about synthetic biology and the iGEM competition and share moments of our work throughout out our project. Up to now，we have got hundreds of subscribers. So we think we have fullfilled our goal of popularizing synthetic biology and iGEM competition and introducing our project to arise people’s awareness of reducing pollution and protecting the environment.

Questionnaires

We have done a questionnaire about heavy metal pollution to find out people’s opinion about it. And there are 140 person take part in the questionnaire. Through this questionnaire,we found that people’s awareness to Nickel pollution is not that much. And only a few people know about biological methods to detect mental pollution. So we think it is important for us to apply our project to daily life.

Learning

Considering that not all of our team members have a biology background,some of them are from other majors,therefore,we invited Prof.Deng to give lessons on synthetic biology to us all. We also invited students who are interested in synthetic biology as well as our project to join in the lessons and learn with us.